Entertainment Rights Share Discussion Threads

[drm4] 10/4/2008 08:05

From Financial Times today:

Entertainment Rights hopes Pat can deliver
By Stanley Pignal

Published: April 10 2008 03:00 | Last updated: April 10 2008 03:00

Entertainment Rights, the children's media company, is hoping a new incarnation of Postman Pat can help it back to growth following a stagnant 2007.

The television producer, which also controls the rights for Rupert the Bear and Basil Brush, told investors that it was in preliminary takeover talks earlier this year after a profits warning caused its shares to lose three-quarters of their value.

A new chief executive, Nick Phillips, was bought in last month to help the company cope with more than £100m of debt that it took on following a large acquisition in the US in January 2007.

As well as adverse trading factors, such as declining consumer spending power and unfavourable exchange rate movements, Entertainment Rights was hit by DVD distribution problems in the run-up to the crucial Christmas trading period.

Those factors contributed to flat pre-tax profits of £7.93m (2006: £7.83m) for the year to December, in spite of sales growth almost doubling to £68.1m (£29.7m) because of acquisitions.

Mr Phillips said the ongoing offer situation precluded him from giving investors any update on trading since January or issue forecasts for the coming year, but he highlighted the "exciting" relaunch of Postman Pat .

In a new series, due to be aired on the BBC in September, Pat will ditch his trusty red van in favour of racier delivery methods such as helicopters and parachutes. Entertainment Rights hope that the new series will allow it to capitalise on derived merchandising opportunities.

The putative takeover also prevented Mr Phillips commenting on efforts to get compensation from its exclusive distributor, Universal Pictures UK, whom it blamed in January for costly logistics delays. Universal declined to comment.

Earnings per share fell by two thirds to 0.49p (1.5p), mainly caused by an effective tax rate of 55 per cent, due to higher taxes in its expanded US business and the impact of losses that could not be written off.

No dividend was again offered.

"This is a company with good long-term value," said Iain Daly at Ingenious Securities, "but the share price right now is being hit by its high debt, depressed end markets and a constrained news flow."

Shares in the company closed down ½p to 10p, up 33 per cent from recent lows.

[rochford6] 09/4/2008 16:52

wonder if we will get details from the company regarding the below from MIPTV


MIPTV 08: More sign up for Transformers AnimatedSamantha Loveday Today, 10:24am
Be first to comment
Entertainment Rights has now secured broadcast agreements in over 80 territories for new show.
Entertainment Rights is this morning celebrating 'an incredible response' from global broadcasters, after sealing more deals for the upcoming Transformers Animated.

The series is made up of 26x22-minute episodes, plus a 70-minute special episode.

ER has now secured agreements in over 80 territories including new key international broadcast platforms; Mediaset (Italy), Turner Broadcasting (Australia, Latin America and India), Jetix (Israel, Netherlands and Belgium), Network 10 (Australia), TV3 (New Zealand), Mediacorp TV12 (Singapore) and TV Globo (Brazil).

This follows on from initial sales with the likes of Nickelodeon (UK), Gulli (France) and Super RTL (Germany).

Chloe van den Berg, executive director of international for ER, said: "The Transformers Animated series has had an incredible response from broadcasters around the globe.

"With 80 territories secured, the show is set to become an international hit, springboarding off the success of last year's Transformers live action movie that grossed more than $700m at the box office worldwide."

ER holds the worldwide TV distribution rights for Transformers Animated (excluding North America) covering TV distribution across both free and pay TV platforms for the series. It is already airing on Cartoon Network in the US

[svendid] 09/4/2008 11:01

Anyone interested in this type of business would be
mad not to bid at these sort of prices!!!

£74 million....which means I suppose that 20p is dirt
cheap?

[svendid] 09/4/2008 10:53

I guess this company is rightfully only valued by the
market at £74 million?

No wonder London is being abandoned by so many of these companies!!!

[majja] 09/4/2008 08:35

all buys and the price goes down ?

[53tom] 09/4/2008 07:51

Taken from the TFNF statement at 08.29

Ingenious Securities said this debt level is in line with its own estimates
"and indicates that the group was a net generator of positive underlying free
cash-flow during the year, a milestone for the group."

[superglide] 09/4/2008 07:10

oh not now lol, glitch advfn feed maybe

53 - hopefully

[53tom] 09/4/2008 06:53

The results on first glance are pretty much as expected. Importantly have found no nasty surprises yet.
Interesting to see the markets response.
Wonder if we will get some deal news today or during the next couple of days.

Taken from the overview of results:
'ER has a number of agreements in negotiation with major US studios to option its
properties and characters for worldwide theatrical film production and
distribution. The benefits to a brand from the release of a major theatrical
film are significant and ER expects to benefit from these agreements in the
medium-term.'

Hi-ho wheres the silver.
regards

[superglide] 09/4/2008 06:51

why is the offer at 40p? at mo?

[phillis] 09/4/2008 06:30

Everything's Right Then

[torquayturk] 04/4/2008 18:35

Hedge Huntering his bets no doubt. Just like his purchases at 8p.

[superglide] 04/4/2008 16:26

just seen t hemmings is at aintree. anyone going, give him nudge eh?

[53tom] 04/4/2008 16:11

Looking at last interim results and this caught my eye.
"Deborah Dugan was appointed Chief Executive Officer & President of Entertainment Rights North America in May 2007. Deborah was formerly President of Worldwide Publishing for Disney and brings to the Company over 16 years of diverse media experience. Deborah was instrumental in the acquisition of Baby Einstein by the Walt Disney Company in 2001."
Hope I am not reading too much into things.
Only two business days to go now.
Regards
Tom

[bonio10000] 04/4/2008 10:10

I spend about 50% of my time auditing licensee's for rights holders and to be honest the US purchase is not compelling.

I think the companny is undervalued and has been managed badly but they well over paid.

[wodahsnoom] 04/4/2008 09:43

hotips - I agree, there's no % in the drip feed approach for Nick Phillips and what normally happens when a new CEO is appointed is all the dirty washing is put out on the line (and some of next doors too) so that in 12 months he/she looks a hero. I expect this to be the case on Wed next but hope we have something significant on the + side to balance it.

[hotips] 04/4/2008 09:26

Reading the lines, never mind inbetween them, ER is beefing up it's non-American market sales team. We tend to forget that there is a great big world out there, off-shore from the States, and whist that market is in decline, focusing on the rest of the world makes total commercial sense. Jane Smith is a shrewd operator, and with Heap, her grossly incompetent boss gone, expect great things from this sharp operator and her team. This is where the company needs to invest - on good sales people, and not on over-paid execs.

I too am very keen to see what Wedensday's results will bring. If it's bad, let's get it all out in the open and start to build from there, but for heaven's sake, let's not have a drip-feed of bad news for months and months. Better out than in.

[rochford6] 04/4/2008 05:51

Looks like they are putting more emphasis on the sales side of things.

ER Promotes Chloe van den Berg

LONDON, April 3: Entertainment Rights (ER) has upped Chloe van den Berg to the role of executive director of international for the company, along with several other key promotions for its sales team.



In her new position, van den Berg will continue to report to Jane Smith, the chief creative and commercial director of Entertainment Rights. Since September 2000, van den Berg has served as ER's head of sales, and has developed and managed of the company's third-party relationships with key partners such as Hasbro and Mattel, among others.



The company's international children's and family sales team, which van den Berg oversees, has also had a number of promotions:



Emmanuelle Bon has been upped to senior territory manager. Bon is responsible for ER's portfolio throughout France and her promotion adds Benelux as part of her remit.



Leila Ouledcheikh will now serve as a senior territory manager as well, and will continue to be responsible for all German-speaking territories, the Middle East and Africa.



Barbora Sopkova was promoted to territory manager and will continue to be responsible for Central and Eastern Europe, while Bruna Ruaro was upped to a position as sales executive covering Southern Europe, including Greece, Cyprus, Malta and Turkey, markets previously covered by Ouledcheikh.



Smith commented: "Chloe has shown exceptional commitment to the company and this promotion recognizes the contribution she has made in running one of the most highly regarded and successful international children's and family sales teams in the world. Chloe's knowledge of the children's and family television market is unparalleled and moving forward Chloe's primary goals will include increasing the presence of the existing Entertainment Rights portfolio outside of North America, including all of the Classic Media and Big Idea properties, and as importantly, continuing to source and secure additional innovative and original content for the ER portfolio as a whole."

[53tom] 03/4/2008 07:21

Well we will eventually know how much of a hole ERT is in Next Wednesday. Six days to go before the results, out on the 09/04/2008.
I just hope it is better than thought and with good future news as well. We investors have all suffered enough over the last 6 months.
Good luck to all.
Tom

[humphbumph] 03/4/2008 00:20

Good buy, SG.

[theshareguru] 02/4/2008 17:20

GOOD END OF DAY BUY

[svendid] 02/4/2008 15:43

Makes absolutely no sense now to leave company on it's
own.....that would only be seen as Heap putting his
own man into the job....and reappearing to ERT as he did
to Chorion.....making bids for the company from a new
platform, after doing everything to weaken the company
prior to takeover...

That's how I would see it....the future would be totally
acrimonious.....he does'nt have a non disclosure, nor a
confidentiality agreemnt worth diddley squat so he would
be free to make life awful!!!

No....best let this get taken out now!!!

[53tom] 01/4/2008 14:58

Well I agree with the sentiment, but I would couch it differently.
ERT have handled the last few months very badly, drip feeding statements over a number of months with no real information, and hence the massive share price fall. They have already stated they will be down on the original year end numbers, but recently stated they would meet the results the city currently expects.
So there should not be any surprises because the issue has been factored into the sp, just the cold realisation by shareholders that it is a fact, UNLESS of course the company wish to share some further bad news they have forgotten to tell us about. Hopefully not, my blind faith in this really being the considerable Hemmings and SVG share buying, which I assume means they have more knowledge than us pleobes, although this is not always the case, BUT Hemmings is a shrewd operator.
I think it would be sensible , especially in this unpredictable market, if ERT bring out ALL news on the day, good and any remaining bad, because then everyone (pi's, institutions and the bidders for the company) has a fair chance to evaluate the situation, but especially those bidding for the company who may realise ERT is worth more than they currently think and up their bids.
So I don't think it neccessarily means that there is more bad news, just that if there is some good news it would be sensible to bring it out at the same time.
AND on a personal level it may just reduce my stress levels.
My usual rambling guff.
Kind regards
Tom

[wodahsnoom] 01/4/2008 12:44

53Tom - The ERT choreography of this looks like : "delay results until we can announce something positive". Unfortunately it will need to be something on the scale of what you have uncovered to distract from what will probably be dire numbers

[53tom] 01/4/2008 12:02

Further to earlier post by Rochford6.
I would like to add that there are at the moment lots of published articles in the US film media about a remake of The Lone Ranger by Disney, using the scriptwriting team who wrote the Pirates of the caribean, Zorro etc. (Just google Lone Ranger and Disney and there loads of them).

Exert taken from the JIm Hill media site:

'And I know of at least two divisions of the Walt Disney Company that really want this "Lone Ranger" film project to be an enormous success:


Disney Consumer Products -- Which (provided that this film is a huge hit) will then be able to sell "Lone Ranger" -themed toys, games, action figures, costumes and accessories to young boys the world over.
Walt Disney Imagineering -- Which wants that this new Western to be a real blockbuster. So that WDI can then use "The Lone Ranger" to help revive a long-dormant project. Which is build an elaborate outdoor stunt show in the area that Disneyland's seriously-under-used Big Thunder Ranch facility currently occupies.
Anywho ... You know what's kind of ironic about this whole situation ? In order to acquire the rights to use the "Long Ranger" characters in a movie, Walt Disney Studios first had to pay Entertainment Rights PLC an enormous amount of of money.

"And what's so ironic about that ?," you ask. Well, back in March of 1988, in order to finally gain control of the Disneyland Hotel, the Walt Disney Company first had to buy the Wrather Corporation. Which -- in addition to owning that Anaheim resort -- also owned all of the rights to "The Lone Ranger." But because Mouse House officials were so eager to recover the $85 million that they'd just spent to acquire Wrather, they quickly turned around and sold off all of those old television & radio shows to the highest bidder. Which is how Entertainment Rights PLC eventually wound up with control of the "Lone Ranger" characters.

And from I've been hearing ... Disney then had to agree to pay this UK-based media company over 10 times what the company originally made off of the sale of all of those old "Lone Ranger" TV shows & radio broadcasts in order to be able to use these characters in this new Jerry Bruckheimer film. And then -- when you factor in that this ambitious new Western will probably cost just as much as "The Curse of the Black Pearl" did to produce (I.E. $120 - $135 million) ... Well, Mouse House officials are really hoping that millions of people worldwide will be willing to part with a little silver in order to see the Lone Ranger & Silver up on the big screen again.

Anyway ... That's the latest news on this yet-to-be-officially-announced Walt Disney Pictures production. So what do you folks think ? Would you actually be interested in seeing a big-screen version of "The Lone Ranger" ? Particularly if this new Western were to be put together by many of the very same talented people who'd created the "Pirates of the Caribbean" trilogy ?



This was created 28May 2007 so its a bit old, but they were talking about it being Disney's 2010 blockbuster film. The other articles are 27/28 march 2008.
Any chance could be announcement at Miptv? Disney and ERT are both there!

Hope there is real substance to these articles, epecially about loads of upfront money for ERT, and hopefully not dependent upon success or otherwise of film.
Regards
Tom